Liminality

In Matthew 15 Jesus and the disciples bump into a Canaanite woman in need for Jesus to heal her daughter. After her first plea for Jesus to help, the disciples beg Jesus to make the woman go away for she is a nuisance. They act just like our churches do today. I mean fellowship, communion, and membership are not for everyone. We can’t have anyone and everyone walking around our stuff, getting in our space, and worshiping our God. It wouldn’t be kosher. It wouldn’t be clean. I mean what if I came in to church on a Sunday morning and someone was sitting in my seat, on my pew? What if they were homeless? What if they were gay? What if they were poor or had too many unruly children? What if they looked Muslim or, (for the Caucasians in Georgia), what if they were black? Just imagine the mess it would cause if we didn’t properly screen our members. It’s just better if we don’t include everyone. We won’t say that we are excluding, we just won’t advertise that ...

Most people associate the word “bully” with seven year old boys taking other kids' lunch money. But bullying is much worse than this. We may see signs of it at age seven but bullying has reached every level of the human condition. Monthly teenagers all across the world are taking their own lives because of incessant bullying. Middle school girls are cutting themselves because they are told they are too fat, unpopular, and boyish. High school boys are physically beaten, emotionally tortured because they aren’t athletic enough or rather they choose to find identity in the arts. People groups bully their way into office, defy the sanctity of human life by pushing an agenda, promoting a plan, or just dictating a desire over loving their neighbor as themselves. We see this happening in North Korea, Egypt, West Africa, Israel, and all across the world. Did you know since the mid 70s in Argentina the government has run by such corrupt bullying system that...